Dear journal,

Long have I considered you a friend. Back home, I would write in your pages each and every evening, telling you about my day. The ups, the downs, and the middles. It was calming. I felt heard. I felt understood, even if you aren't truly a living thing. Perhaps that is for the best. Living things have so much to say. So very much to say. But you don't judge, for your ear is forever open and your lips forever sealed. Thank you. Though I suppose you aren't the same journal I had in those days. That book is long gone, along with the rest of my homeland. Even so, I still want to treat you as its continuation, as much as I can. Though your binding is different and your pages blank, I still feel the same sense of safety and understanding emanating from your being. You are the same, even if you can't remember. I want to remind you, if you'd allow me.

It has been a few months since I arrived. At first, I wasn't sure how. All I could recall were faint sensations. Screams, some my own. The weight of a sword in my hand, the warm bronze against my skin. Flashes of pain, a pervading sense of wrongness as everything went silent...

They say lost. In a way, they aren't wrong. Loss has become a part of me, whether I like it or not. I feel like my home is lost to me, with its ashes having settled two decades in the passed. Two decades that I wasn't here for. The disconnect is palpable. I am a living relic of my culture, a culture that most Altherians have not even heard of and will never get to know. I'm not entirely sure how to feel about that. You've lost something as well, haven't you journal? All those memories we made together. We'll get through this together, old friend. We always have.

Forever yours,

Daiyu